Chapter 181 - 180: Trying Out a Voice Chat Room for the First Time

Chapter 181: Chapter 180: Trying Out a Voice Chat Room for the First Time

Her best friend had a soft spot for sentimental moments. In the past, whenever they watched movies—especially tearjerkers—Rian Sinclair and Selena always had to keep a pack of tissues on hand for her.

But did she realize just how badly the person currently speaking to her had terrified her earlier?

The game ended. Staff members entered the area and guided the players out one by one, while Rian took off the jacket they had provided.

Seeing that her best friend was still reeling from the adrenaline, Rian led her to a sofa outside to rest. A moment later, Melody sidled up to them and beamed at Sarah Forrest. "Let’s exchange contact info! We should book another escape room together sometime."

Sarah instantly regained her energy, nodding eagerly. Rian also scanned her QR code, and the three of them successfully added each other as friends on their messaging app.

As they were leaving, Melody smiled and reiterated that they had to play together again. She was about to say something else when a tall, handsome man beside her pulled her away. She swatted at him in annoyance but still managed to turn back and wave goodbye to the two girls.

Sarah waved excitedly, and Rian offered a casual wave of her own. Once the couple was out of sight, Sarah clasped her hands together, her eyes sparkling. "Melody’s boyfriend dotes on her so much! They’re so sweet together!"

Rian smiled silently. Watching her best friend’s dramatic reaction, she couldn’t help but tease her. "Jealous? Go find a boyfriend of your own, then."

Whatever romantic notions Sarah might have briefly entertained instantly vanished as she shook her head vigorously. "No, absolutely not. Men will only slow down my research progress!"

Rian didn’t press the issue. She took her best friend out for a lavish meal before dropping her off at her hotel. Afterward, she returned to her own villa.

She didn’t have many friends in Argent right now. Ash Sinclair cared about nothing but his competitions, and Sarah was entirely consumed by her daily research. She was the only one with entirely too much free time on her hands.

After washing up, Rian lay in bed and finally replied to the backlog of messages she had accumulated throughout the day. Once that was done, she leisurely scrolled through short videos. The content was bizarre and highly varied, but it eventually left her feeling thoroughly bored.

Remembering the voice chat rooms her best friend had mentioned earlier, she searched her memory for the name of the app and downloaded it.

After completing the new user registration, the homepage immediately began recommending various voice channels to her. The app clearly understood its demographics perfectly, flooding Rian’s feed exclusively with channels hosted by male stars.

Upon entering one of the channels, Rian noticed that the stream of money being gifted in the broadcast never ceased. By reading the scrolling chat, she managed to piece together what was going on.

Tonight was a channel battle. Of the eight male stars currently on the microphone, seven were effortlessly racking up millions of points. The only exception was the host on microphone number seven, whose score had barely crossed the ten thousand mark.

"Could the gap really be this massive?" Rian frowned slightly. Though she wasn’t particularly familiar with the platform, she had briefly skimmed the rules while the app was downloading.

She wondered if he lacked a wealthy patron, or if his patron had made an unreasonable demand.

The chat was scrolling at a breakneck pace, but Rian managed to use her perfect 20/20 vision to pluck out the key details. Apparently, the wealthy patron supporting microphone number seven had made a demand that he refused. In a fit of rage, the patron had stormed off to shower other hosts with gifts instead—specifically, the other seven male stars in the very same channel.

Rian couldn’t help but click her tongue. "This patron certainly knows how to make a point, but the guy has some serious guts."

Even now, he wasn’t begging for favors or desperately asking for votes. She liked that kind of personality.

Rian navigated to the top-up page. The maximum single deposit limit was one hundred thousand, but fortunately, the app allowed consecutive transactions. It didn’t take much effort for her to casually load ten million into her account.

Right then, it was the host on microphone number six’s turn to perform. His voice was decent enough, though entirely unremarkable. Before long, it was time for microphone number seven.

Suddenly, an incredibly ethereal voice filled the channel.

The chat exploded with activity, scrolling even faster than when she had first entered. Rian also found the man’s voice quite pleasant, so she began sending gifts of money, one after another. His score rapidly caught up to the other seven hosts, even showing signs of surpassing them entirely.

The listeners in the channel were completely stunned as they watched a brand-new, low-level account crazily spamming expensive gifts. Once her finger grew sore from tapping the screen, Rian stopped sending gifts, swiped out of the channel, and entered the next one.

The channel’s main host froze in disbelief for a moment before quickly snapping out of it to shower her with gratitude. However, just as he was about to speak to her directly, the chat flooded with messages pointing out that the new wealthy patron had already left.

Rian spent the next little while browsing through various voice channels. While she certainly checked out the male stars, she didn’t skip the female hosts either. By the end of the night, Rian had made a name for herself across the entire app, inadvertently earning herself a brand-new alias. Fast.

She had chosen her username entirely at random, going with the single word, "Fast."

She was just about to log off when she noticed her inbox was flooded with red notification dots. These were likely private messages from hosts across various channels coming to "hand in their homework." She had only just learned this piece of slang—it referred to the lengthy, sycophantic essays that hosts would write to wealthy patrons in hopes of securing their financial support.

[Wahaha: Miss, is your husband home today?]

Rian typed back: [???? What the hell???]

[Taro: Are you there?]

Rian: [No.]

[Second Best: You must be incredibly beautiful, right?]

Rian: [How did you know?]

[Hayden: Good evening. I know I probably shouldn’t message you like this, as few people actually enjoy receiving these ’homework’ essays, but I genuinely just wanted to introduce myself. So, hello, my name is Hayden. The sky won’t stay dark forever, so always remember to smile.]

Reading this message, Rian thought his writing skills left something to be desired, but it was still far more pleasing to read than the previous ones.

She tapped his profile picture to enter his channel and gifted him a ’Bright Moon Rising from the Sea,’ which cost 6,166 coins. On the screen, a luminous moon slowly ascended over a digital ocean. Watching the special effect play out, Rian thought for the very first time that the app developers actually had decent aesthetic taste.

[Bin: Do you still remember me?]

Rian: [...]

[Ferry: Do you hate me?]

Rian: [Wow.]

There were countless more messages after that, but Rian couldn’t be bothered to read them. She exited the app, tossed her phone aside, and went straight to sleep.

The next morning.

DING!

[Current location is a valid sign-in spot. Would the host like to sign in now?]

"Sign in," Rian said.

DING!

[Sign-in successful! You have been rewarded with one item from the Black Tech Series: Mid-Range Stock Trend Chart! Note: This chart accurately predicts mid-range stock market trends down to the single digits. Allows an initial capital injection of up to ten billion! The Mid-Range Stock Trend Chart has a cooldown period of two months.]

Hearing the system’s announcement, Rian raised a hand and summoned Quentin Sinclair. "Do we own any domestic financial companies?"

"Yes, Miss," Quentin replied. "Currently, Helios Financial boasts a one hundred percent success rate. However, we’ve only made moves on a few small companies to pull in some quick profits. The industry’s top traders have all been poached by rival firms, and given my current workload, I haven’t had much time to oversee Helios Financial’s operations."

Rian nodded in understanding. She knew a fair bit about finance herself, but with so many businesses under her umbrella, she couldn’t guarantee that every single one had reliable partners or trustworthy traders. Furthermore, she simply didn’t have the time to network with other financial firms right now, meaning Helios Financial was completely cut off from major insider information.

She made a mental note to prioritize Helios Financial. After all, the money earned through the stock market was pure, tax-free profit—taxes were only incurred during transfers of ownership.

In stock trading, whatever you earned was entirely yours to keep. It was a massively lucrative field. Even though she didn’t have the energy to manage it personally right now, there was a massive piece of the pie sitting right in front of her...

And Rian absolutely refused to leave it uneaten.